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IT director warns of year‑end encumbrances and asks for specialist as committee approves budget
Summary
Everett—ity IT leaders told the budget panel that the department is "year‑end heavy," with large annual contracts and encumbrances that make monthly burn rates misleading. The committee approved the IT budget after discussion and an agreement to supply updated purchase‑order reports to councilors.
Everett's Information Technology director asked councilors to consider how annual contracts and outstanding purchase orders — not captured in the standard budget printout — drive the department's apparent year‑to‑date underspend.
"We are a department of two for the entire city," IT Director Doug Dorgan said, describing the operational constraints that make timely hardware deployments and contract management difficult. He explained that many IT expenses are invoiced or encumbered on an annual schedule, including email licenses, disaster‑recovery (Rubrik) services and Q‑Alert constituent‑service software.
Councilors expressed frustration that the budget book's ‘‘expended’’ column did not reflect outstanding purchase orders and encumbrances. Finance staff said the city ccounting software cannot show encumbrances on the same budget report, so they provided an updated all‑departments expenditure report showing roughly $406,000 in outstanding IT purchase orders and additional pending requisitions.
Dorgan asked for an additional full‑time IT specialist to help deploy equipment and run help‑desk operations; he said that without an extra staffer the department risks slower response times for city operations. The committee did not eliminate the request and approved the IT budget as presented; staff agreed to provide a clearer encumbrances report for future meetings so councilors can better evaluate cuts.
The committee also discussed those annual contracts at length and agreed to supply open purchase‑order detail with the next budget distribution so motions can be based on both expended and encumbered amounts.
